Capitals are improper wherever there is not some special rule or reason for their use:  a century ago books were disfigured by their frequency; as, “Many a Noble Genius is lost for want of Education.  Which wou’d then be Much More Liberal.  As it was when the Church Enjoy’d her Possessions.  And Learning was, in the Dark Ages, Preserv’d almost only among the Clergy.”—­CHARLES LESLIE, 1700; Divine Right of Tythes, p. 228.

OBSERVATIONS.

OBS. 1.—­The letters of the alphabet, read by their names, are equivalent to words.  They are a sort of universal signs, by which we may mark and particularize objects of any sort, named or nameless; as, “To say, therefore, that while A and B are both quadrangular, A is more or less quadrangular than B, is absurd.”—­Murray’s Gram., p. 50.  Hence they are used in the sciences as symbols of an infinite variety of things or ideas, being construed both substantively and adjectively; as, “In ascending from the note C to D, the interval is equal to an inch; and from D to E, the same.”—­Music of Nature, p. 293.  “We have only to imagine the G clef placed below it.”—­Ib. Any of their forms may be used for such purposes, but the custom of each science determines our choice.  Thus Algebra employs small Italics; Music, Roman capitals; Geometry, for the most part, the same; Astronomy, Greek characters; and Grammar, in some part or other, every sort.  Examples:  “Then comes answer like an ABC book.”—­Beauties of Shakspeare, p. 97.  “Then comes question like an a, b, c, book.—­Shakspeare.”  See A, B, C, in Johnson’s quarto Dict. Better:—­“like an A-Bee-Cee book.”

   “For A, his magic pen evokes an O,
    And turns the tide of Europe on the foe.”—­Young.

OBS. 2.—­A lavish use of capitals defeats the very purpose for which the letters were distinguished in rank; and carelessness in respect to the rules which govern them, may sometimes misrepresent the writer’s meaning.  On many occasions, however, their use or disuse is arbitrary, and must be left to the judgement and taste of authors and printers.  Instances of this kind will, for the most part, concern chief words, and come under the fifteenth rule above.  In this grammar, the number of rules is increased; but the foregoing are still perhaps too few to establish an accurate uniformity.  They will however tend to this desirable result; and if doubts arise in their application, the difficulties will be in particular examples only, and not in the general principles of the rules.  For instance:  In 1 Chron., xxix, 10th, some of our Bibles say, “Blessed be thou, LORD God of Israel our father, for ever and ever.”  Others say, “Blessed be thou, LORD God of Israel, our Father, for ever and ever.”  And others, “Blessed be thou, LORD God of Israel our Father, for ever and ever.”  The last is wrong, either in the capital F, or for lack of a comma after Israel.  The others differ in meaning; because they construe the word father, or Father, differently.  Which is right I know not.  The first agrees with the Latin Vulgate, and the second, with the Greek text of the Septuagint; which two famous versions here disagree, without ambiguity in either.[105]